c. 1998 Religion News Service
After Good Friday game, cardinal says no to baseball
(RNS) Cardinal John O’Connor, the archbishop of New York, plans to boycott the baseball season this year because the major leagues played games on Good Friday.”I love the Yankees. I love the Mets. I love baseball,”the archbishop wrote in his archdiocesan newspaper, Catholic New York.”But I will not go to a game because major league teams played on Good Friday.” Professional baseball games were played at 15 sites on Friday, April 10, the day Western Christians commemorated Jesus’ crucifixion. It was also the first night of the Jewish Passover.
O’Connor was especially disturbed the Yankees and the Cleveland Indians began their home games at 1:05 p.m., the Associated Press reported. To O’Connor, the hours of noon to 3 p.m. were”sacred hours”marking the crucifixion time.
O’Connor praised the Boston Red Sox who pushed back their opening game time that Friday to 3:05 p.m. so Christians could attend afternoon services before the game. The team also banned beer sales that day.
However, the different starting time still posed problems for some fans, including Catholics who wanted to attend liturgies that began at 3 p.m. and Jews who might have had trouble getting home by sunset for Passover Seders.
Rick Cerrone, a spokesman for the Yankees, said the team is willing to reconsider its tradition of making their home opener a day game.”With the respect that we have for Cardinal O’Connor, we will certainly give consideration to his concerns and his suggestions in the future,”Cerrone told the New York Post.
The Indians wrote a letter to the American League requesting that it”be more sensitive”about scheduling games on Good Friday.”We regret that some people are inconvenienced, but it’s impossible to create a 162-game, 30-team schedule without some problems,”said Rich Levin, a spokesman for Major League Baseball.
Archdiocesan spokesman Joe Zwilling said O’Connor’s decision is a personal one and not a call for other Roman Catholics to boycott baseball.
Pelikan, noted Lutheran scholar, converts to Orthodoxy
(RNS) Jaroslav Pelikan, the world-renowned Lutheran scholar whose career has spanned more than 50 years, has converted to Orthodox Christianity at age 74.
A spokesman for St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary in Crestwood, N.Y., told RNS that Pelikan”was received into the Orthodox Church”at the seminary’s chapel on March 25.
Pelikan, however, is keeping his decision low-profile and refused to be interviewed on the subject.
Pelikan was ordained a minister by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod after graduating from Concordia Seminary in 1946. He left that denomination in 1976, when the church, badly wracked over doctrinal issues, especially the nature of Scripture, was taken over by theological conservatives.
He later joined the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), but had shed his ministerial duties. An ELCA official said Pelikan attended Bethesda Lutheran Church in New Haven, Conn., an ELCA congregation, until early this year.
Pelikan, who has authored more than 30 books on religion and culture in Western civilization, is Sterling professor emeritus of history at Yale University, where he has taught since 1962. He is best known for his magesterial”The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine,”as well as a book on Mary,”Mary Through the Centuries,”and”Jesus Through the Centuries.”He was an editor of the 22-volume edition of the works of Martin Luther published between 1955 and 1971.
In 1983, he was honored with the Jefferson Award, the highest honor the U.S. government gives to a scholar in the humanities.
St. Vladimir’s is a seminary of the Orthodox Church in America, a self-governing Orthodox denomination that traces its origins on the North American continent to 1794 and was granted independence by its mother church, the Russian Orthodox Church, in 1970.
Austrian cardinal apologizes for alleged acts of his predecessor
(RNS) In what church officials called an unprecedented act of contrition, Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn apologized Thursday (April 16) and offered aid to those who were allegedly molested by his predecessor, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer.
Groer, 78, who has been suspended from his duties as head of the Austrian church and will reportedly be sent into exile at an unnamed monastery, has not admitted the charges nor apologized, leaving the alleged victims bitter and the Austrian church in turmoil.
On Thursday, Schoenborn attempted to do that, the Associated Press reported.”As a bishop of this (Vienna) diocese, I apologize for everything by which my predecessor, and other church dignitaries, have wronged people entrusted to them,”the cardinal said in a statement.”We in the Vienna archdiocese are prepared to offer help to all those who thus have suffered damage.” He asked Austrian Catholics to put aside the scandal and”to jointly follow the path of mutual trust in honesty, respect, and compassion.” Schoenborn also underlined the report that Groer”will comply with the clear request of the pope to give up his sphere of activities. This means that he will no longer make an appearance as a bishop and (will) leave Austria.”
Apple pulls Dalai Lama image from Asian advertising
(RNS) An image of the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled religious and spiritual leader, has been removed from Apple Computer advertising in Asia for fear of upsetting China, a potentially huge market for the U.S. company.
Apple has used the Dalai Lama’s image in TV and magazine ads and on billboards in the United States. He is one of several people known for the willingness to take personal and creative risks _ an image Apple has sought to foster.
Other images being used in the Apple Asia campaign are of Muhammad Ali, Mohandas K. Ghandi, Pablo Picasso, Amelia Earhart and Alfred Hitchcock.
Su Sara, an Apple spokeswoman in Sydney, Australia, told The New York Times that China had not pressured Apple to drop the Dalai Lama from the campaign. But, she added,”where there are political sensitivities, we (do) not want to offend anyone. We needed to decide on images that were appropriate across the region.” Since the 1950s, China has ruled Tibet by force. The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 and has since resided in India, from where he has waged a non-stop campaign to gain some measure of autonomy for Tibet by seeking to turn world opinion against China’s occupation.
Tseten Samdup, a spokesman for the Dalai Lama, called the Apple decision”unfortunate.”He also said the Dalai Lama would still allow his image to be used by Apple in the United States.
Deion Sanders turns Christian book advance over to ministry
(RNS) Dallas Cowboys receiver Deion Sanders has turned over more than twice the amount of his first book advance to a ministry project of Bishop T.D. Jakes, a Pentecostal pastor in Dallas.
Sanders has received $465,000 from Word Publishing in Nashville, Tenn., for a book he plans to title”Power, Money & Sex.”But he has announced that he will give $1 million toward the building of a youth center through Project 2000, a social outreach of Jakes’ church, The Potter’s House.”For so long, I focused on showing these children Deion, but I’m going to show them J.I.M. now _ J.I.M. is the Jesus in me,”Sanders said April 10 at a Bible conference hosted by Jakes’ church.
The book, scheduled to be published in October, will deal with his sports career and his Christian conversion and how to avoid misappropriating power, sex and money. The book advance also represents two other related publications, a children’s book and a teaching workbook.
Plans for Project 2000, of which the youth center is a part, also include homeless shelters, job placement efforts and other programs to help at-risk youth.
Shroud of Turn to go on public display
(RNS) The Shroud of Turin, believed by many to be the burial cloth of Jesus, will go on public display Sunday (April 19) for the first time in 20 years.
Some 800,000 people have already signed up to see the controversial, yellowing linen cloth, Reuters reported.
It will be only the fourth time this century that the shroud _ which appears to contain the ghostly, blood-stained image of a man _ is shown. The new display is timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the first photographs that showed the image.
Scholars and skeptics, scientists and believers have long debated the authenticity of the shroud, with believers and some scientists maintaining the cloth dates from the time of Jesus and was used to wrap his body after his crucifixion. Other scientists and skeptics insist the cloth dates to 11th or 12th century.
Mission America’s CEO becomes chair of Lausanne Committee
(RNS) Paul Cedar, CEO of Mission America, has been elected as executive chair of the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization.
The election came at the committee’s biennial meeting in March in Toronto.
The movement, which began in 1974 at an evangelism congress in Lausanne, Switzerland, organized by evangelist Billy Graham, was previously chaired by the Rev. Fergus Macdonald of Scotland. The Rev. Tom Houston, who has held top positions with the movement since 1989, has retired.
Cedar expressed hopes that LCWE can build partnerships with other groups concerned with world evangelization.
Cedar, a former president of the Evangelical Free Church of America, chairs Mission America, a coalition of Christian groups working together on evangelism.
Quote of the Day: Russ Nockels, surgeon to football player Reggie Brown
(RNS)”There is an old joke among doctors that God does the healing and we send the bills. Amen to that. … But if it was just prayer, no one would be in a wheelchair.” _ Russ Nockels, the surgeon who fused now-retired Detroit Lions linebacker Reggie Brown’s vertebrae after he was seriously injured in a December football game, as quoted in USA Today.
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